Landfills in California

Introduction

“ Californians throw away 6 pounds of trash every day, equivalent to almost 2200 pounds every year, roughly the weight of a car. ” —— CALPIRG

According to the resource, during the past decade, the annual tonnage of post-recycled municipal solid waste being placed in California’s landfills has increased by almost 50%, and since 2014, its recycling rate has declined from 50% in 2014 to 40%. In addition, more and more countries are banning the United States from exporting solid waste to them because of pollution concerns. Even though the waste problem is getting worse, people still don’t care about it. In order to understand where those waste “going”, I decided to analyze the waste disposal processes and landfills in California counties. Attempts to find out whether each county has sufficient landfills for energy regeneration and whether additional landfills are needed to reduce resource waste from garbage transportation. Finally, the interactive map of regional waste disposal and energy regeneration capacity is created based on California landfill electricity regeneration data.

CA Waste

Part One

Solid Waste Statistics in The Last Decade in CA

By processing a dataset of solid waste in California for the Past Ten Years, make a chart and analyze the overall situation of California’s waste disposal.

CA Waste 09-19

The Growth of the data about disposal of solid waste in CA in recent years according to the graph.

CA Waste Growth

Analyzing CA’s solid waste Exports, Imports, and Intrastate Transformation in recent years through the graph.

CA Waste Transformation

Calculate the annual solid waste recycling rate according to the formula (annual waste reuse volume / annual waste disposal volume)

CA Waste ReuseRate

Create a graph to show annual reuse rate of solid waste in CA. Through observation, the reuse rate of solid waste in CA has been Decreasing in recent years.

CA Waste ReuseRate

Continued lower waste reuse rates indicate that California needs more efficient landfills for waste reuse.

Part Two

Solid Waste Transportation in CA

Through the analysis of the data of solid waste transportation in each county, the static maps of data visualization are made to show the areas with insufficient waste treatment capacity.

I analyze the received volume and exported volume of each county in CA in 2019.

County Waste

Observing the quantity of solid waste handled and transported in each county through the graph.

County Waste Disposal

Reorganizing the dataset by sorting Export Volumes:

  1. Delete counties that cannot dispose of waste autonomously
  2. Calculate the total generation of solid waste in each county and add it to the dataset
  3. Calculate the solid waste export rate in each county

County Waste Export

Users can clearly observe the export volume of each county through the interactive map.

> 1,000,000500,000 - 1,000,000200,000 - 500,000150,000 - 200,000100,000 - 150,00050,000 - 100,00025,000 - 50,00015,000 - 25,00010,000 - 15,0005,000 - 10,000< 5,000Export Volumes in CountyExport Volumes(Tons)

Creating a new dataset by sorting Export Rate

County Waste Export Rate

Showing export rate of each county via the Pie Chart, users can observe counties that rely more on exports to dispose of their solid waste.

County Waste Export Pie Chart

According to the ranking of each county’s export volume and export rate, calculating the potential need for additional landfill counties:

1.Butte 2.Shasta 3.Los Angeles 4.Stanislans 5. Napa 6.Marin

Part Three

Solid Waste Transportation in Butte

Using Butte as an example, analyze the source and amount of solid waste it exports and receives from other counties.
First upload the dataset of the amount of solid waste sent and received from Butte in different counties.

Butte Waste

The interactive map showing the amount of solid waste Butte exports to each county.

> 500,000100,000 - 500,0001,000 - 100,000100 - 1,00050 - 10010 - 505 - 10< 5Export Volumes in ButteExport Volumes(Tons)

The interactive map showing the amount of solid waste Butte receives from each county.

> 450,00010 - 450,0002 - 5< 2Received Volumes in ButteReceived Volumes(Tons)

The chart shows that a large amount of Butte’s solid waste needs to be transported to landfills in more distant counties for disposal.

Part Four

Landfills in CA

Through the interactive map, user can view the number and details of landfills in the area, and find out whether new landfills are needed in the area.

Make a static_map from the geojson dataset showing the density of CA’s landfills.

Density of Landfills

Map of Landfills' Density

Creating the interactive_map to observe the number of landfills in each area.

Making a interactive_maps with the details of landfills in CA, it includes the status, geographic information and function of each landfill.

By sorting the data, the number of landfill sites owned by each county was calculated and plotted.

Landfills in CA

Through the graph and interactive map, users can intuitively understand the number of solid waste landfills owned by each county and observe counties with fewer landfills.

> 20080 - 10050 - 8030 - 5025 - 3020 - 2515 - 2010 - 155 - 10< 5Number of Landfill in CountyNumber

From the analysis we can see that there is a huge difference between counties in the number of landfills they have, and many areas with numbers below 5 suggest adding more landfills.

Part Five

Energy Regeneration of Landfills in CA

Displaying the power regeneration capacity of landfills in the area through the interactive map and the graph.

Firstly, restructuring the dataset of landfills with power regeneration by filtering the data.

Landfill MV Generation

Secondly, making a graph showing the MW Generation of different landfills.

Landfill MV Generation

Finally, as an case study, I select landfills with electric power regeneration in the CA, and draw a interactive map through the level of Electricity Generation. Colors indicate Electricity Generation, and diameters indicate the size of the reduction in regional energy consumption.

Through the interactive map, users can learn about the situation of waste recycling in different areas and use it as a reference for the subsequent layout of more energy recycling landfills.

Reference

Reference_Image

Images:

https://www.latimes.com/world/global-development/la-fg-global-trash-20160422-20160421-snap-htmlstory.html
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kirstenchilstrom/photos-landfills-trash-extreme-waste
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/global-waste/
https://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/Environmental_Problems:_Landfills

Data:

https://www2.calrecycle.ca.gov/LGCentral/DisposalReporting/Statewide/Disposal
https://www2.calrecycle.ca.gov/LGCentral/DisposalReporting/Destination/CountywideSummary
https://www2.calrecycle.ca.gov/LGCentral/DisposalReporting/Statewide/TransportedSolidWaste
https://www2.calrecycle.ca.gov/SolidWaste/Site/Search
https://gis.data.ca.gov/datasets/2e8d23425c18401b80f198618e93bffd_0/about
https://www.epa.gov/lmop/project-and-landfill-data-state

Others:

https://calpirg.org/reports/cap/state-waste-california#:~:text=Californians%20throw%20away%206%20pounds,person%20per%20day%20(PPD).
https://waldyrious.net/viridis-palette-generator/

Student: Wentao Zeng

Instructor: Max Gardner

GSI: Irene Farah

CYPLAN255: Urban Informatics and Visualization Spring 2022

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